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Hackers gain access to nearly 93,000 Sony Playstation accounts

Oct 17, 2011 Matt Roesly

Sony was under fire leading into the summer as a springtime hacking frenzy threw its gaming network on Playstation into chaos. Certain analysts described it as the largest identity theft in history. On Tuesday, the company revealed that its network was hacked into again, TechEye reports. According to Sony executive Satoshi Fukuoka, approximately 93,000 customer accounts were accessed by thieves. These accounts hold personal information, such as names, addresses and credit card details. The company states that hackers may have used third-party information to log into the gaming network. "We want to let you know that we have detected attempts … to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database," Sony said in a statement. "These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources." Luckily, Sony was able to secure most of the accounts, yet approximately 100 may still be in the hands of hackers. Sony allows users to store credit card information on its gaming database to make the payment process more efficient – however, given the rate of hacking during the past six months, a more secure option might be to refrain from the practice until the company resolves the issue.